Venturing Vows

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Venturing Vows

Elopement and micro wedding photographer for couples who want the local experience for their Oregon Coast elopement.

07/21/2026

An Oregon Coast elopement on 35mm film. 🎞️

07/06/2026

One of the best and most emotional days of your life and you’re going to waste energy trying to keep your dress clean?
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If this freaks you out, I want to think about what you did or will do with your wedding dress after the wedding. My wedding dress is currently sitting on a hanger in the closet. What am I going to do, wear it for Halloween? You pay all this money for a dress you realistically wear for one day and it goes up in the closet.
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So why do we waste so much energy trying to keep a white dress clean on our special day? Take away from an important day for a dress that will sit in a closet for the rest of its life. What if we changed gears, what if we used the dress we use once to truly LIVE on your day? Run and dance with your new spouse. Stand in a creek, go on a hike, and watch the dirt stain creep its way up. When you’re done with your dress, it should look like you lived one of the best days of your life in it.
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(Also maybe don’t buy a super expensive wedding dress for hiking. 😂 It definitely helps getting over the mud.)
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So tell me, what adventures are you going to take your wedding dress on?
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Oregon Coast
Oregon elopement photographer

07/02/2026

I got to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the origin story of my elopement business this week. 💍
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It’s 2019 and I’m still a high school science teacher in Idaho. We have an entire traditional wedding planned and we just realized it looks nothing like we wanted. Somewhere in the weeds of the details, we’d lost track of what we wanted our day to look like and planned a day for everyone else. I was gonna get married in a barn in Idaho y’all. 😬
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With 3 months to the date on the invites, we planned an entire Oregon Coast elopement for a month prior and turned our original date into a reception.
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It was the best choice we could’ve made.
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When I give you elopement advice, it all started with my own day. My very first elopement timeline I made was my own. I had to figure out how to get an Oregon marriage license as an out of state resident, just like you. I learned the ins and outs of wedding permits on the coast to see if I needed one. I always get a sandy dress photo during elopements because my sandy dress photo is one of my favorites from my elopement. I can tell you hiking in a dress isn’t as bad as you think because I bought my dress long before I knew I’d be hiking in it. When I tell you sand comes out of the dress shockingly well, it’s because my own dress cleaned up great for our reception.
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More importantly, eloping set a precedent in our relationship. We worried less about what people thought of our choices and more about what we thought of them.
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By 2020, I resigned as a teacher and started Venturing Vows. We uprooted our entire lives to move to the Oregon Coast. I’m a 5th generation born and raised Idahoan so this was a big deal.
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I haven’t booked a traditional wedding since 6/30/19.
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Oregon Coast elopement
Oregon elopement photographer

06/10/2026

I may have moved away from Brookings but you’ll still catch me there all the time. 🤘 While I love my new home base on the North Oregon Coast, I’m glad I have an excuse to continue to spend time on this epic stretch of coast.
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Brookings/Samuel H. Boardman is probably the rockiest stretch of coast in Oregon. It’s not easy to get to, the nearest airport that feasibly works being 3 hours away. That also means not a lot of people take the extra effort to visit this part of the coast.
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As if the coastline isn’t amazing enough, Brookings is also 30 minutes from a Redwood State and National Parks area. You can easily fit both the towering redwoods and the rugged coast in your elopement day.
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The cherry on top? This place has the best weather on the coast. The further south, the longer sunny season and less rain. If you’re opting for a shoulder season date for your elopement, this may be your secret to getting nice weather.
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Check my website for all sorts of resources and elopement galleries from stunning elopement days in these parks. 🌊🌲
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Oregon elopement photographer
Oregon coast
Pacific Northwest elopement

05/29/2026

Why you should elope on the Oregon Coast ⬇️

1️⃣ It’s 363 miles of epic scenery and location options. It gives you freedom to pick a spot that fits your vision, comfort level with crowds, and how long you want to hike.

2️⃣ The weather is mild year round. While there’s normal fluctuations seasonally, you won’t be dealing with snow or heat waves. Many people find the coast temperature from May-October to be perfect for those fancy outfits.

3️⃣ Less crowds than some public lands, especially national parks. Because the coast is so extensive and all public land, there’s lots of places to avoid crowds. Some places are busy but there’s so many hidden gems.

4️⃣ Forest fire smoke is rare on the Oregon Coast. Given how fire seasons have been going, this can be a big deal. You can’t guarantee no smoke but the odds are quite low because of how coastal weather works.

Check out my website to learn more about eloping on the Oregon Coast! There’s still time to plan your 2026 elopement.
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Oregon Coast elopement
Oregon elopement photographer

05/27/2026

A set of images that would not have been possible without planning around the tides. 🌊
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These two wanted to go tide pooling so we planned the day around it. If you want epic tide pooling as part of your day, you need to be okay with picking your date around it.
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That’s the thing with the coast, you can’t fight the tides. Some locations aren’t accessible at certain tides. The beach does not look the same at high tide as low. You can’t get as up close to the scenery if the tide is high. A beach will feel a lot more crowded at a high tide than a low.
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One of the first things I do when folks tell me their date is flexible is send them a list of dates with ideal tides. At this point, I’d say 75% of my elopements are dates picked around tides.
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I swear this is my ultimate photo secret. Make plans around the natural movements of nature instead of forcing them to work for your scenario.
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Oregon Coast elopement
Oregon elopement photographer

05/12/2026

Swipe to see one of my favorite photos I’ve taken ➡️
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We all love a good beach photo with birds flying about but actually capturing that (and not disturbing them to get it) is a totally different story. I only have a handful of epic bird portraits in my portfolio.
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On this day, the stand out to me was just how many birds I know were in the background and how few of them really showed up in the image. There were HUNDREDS of birds soaring in circles and to me, it looks way less than that in the image.
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Regardless, I’m so glad I was able to capture this incredible feature of Haystack Rock. While I’m usually there knee deep in a tide pool, there’s something about experiencing the birds here. When the eagles land and they swirl like a cyclone. Or the masses who have gathered just to catch a small glimpse of the puffins.
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As always, I love my Oregon Coast home and I love when I get to capture all her amazing facets. 🪶
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Oregon Coast
Oregon photographer
Cannon Beach, OR

05/08/2026

A little look at my first elopement of 2026. 🌊
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Oregon Coast elopement
Elopement photographer

Address

Portland, OR

Website

http://venturingvows.com/

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